


JB+LH

by claudiarya



Series: A Glimpse in the Lives of Lucie and Jesse [1]
Category: The Last Hours Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Awkwardness, F/M, Fluff, Julian Blackthorn reference, Metafanfiction, Negromancy, One Shot, Post Chain of Gold, Romance, Stubborn Teens in Love, angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25015318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claudiarya/pseuds/claudiarya
Summary: Following the events of Chain of Gold, a conversation between Lucie and Jesse, inspired by the reference we have of Cristina finding "scrawled initials" in Lord of Shadows.From the text:“How I wish I could touch you right now. You have no idea how excruciating this is for me”. Lucie’s eyes that were staring at their almost interconnected limbs, raised her gaze with a gasp at his words. “And you cannot fathom how much I wished you were here with me. Really here with me.”
Relationships: Blackdale - Relationship, Jesse Blackthorn & Lucie Herondale, Jesse Blackthorn/Lucie Herondale
Series: A Glimpse in the Lives of Lucie and Jesse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2150013
Comments: 18
Kudos: 32





	JB+LH

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! This is my first time writing for the Shadowhunters fandom, although I've been a fan for a long time now.  
> When I read Chain of Gold, apart from my otp (Thomastair for the win), I was really intrigued by how Jesse and Lucie's relationship might develop in the next two books. So here it is. 
> 
> The inspiration hit me when my friend, who was reading Lord of Shadows, sent me the part in which Cristina finds initials scrawled in this room.
> 
> English is not my first language, so I apologize in advance for mistakes or grammar monstrosity of any kind. 
> 
> Without further ado: ENJOY!

**JB + LH**

The wind rattled the panes of the high window of the room, a howling similar to those of wolves echoed all around Lucie, who was writing at her desk. The weather had changed as the year had progressed; the enjoyable heat of the summer had bled quickly into a very typical English fall. The soft scratching of the fountain pen on parchment like a melody that always managed to calm her down. It had been a few… eventful couple of months, to say the least, and the only moment she had found to dedicate to her writing had been at night by candlelight. Which at the moment was flickering, dancing along the draughts entering the room. It was the perfect setting of her new installment to the _Beautiful Cordelia._

In this particular chapter Cruel Prince James was revealing to the Beautiful Cordelia how deeply he had always loved her from the moment they’ve met, and despite them being on opposing sides of the current conflict, that he had started questioning everything for her presence only. All taking place on the turret of his castle, on a dark and stormy night.

BANG! Lucie jumped in her seat; the wind had made the window open in a surprisingly strong gust, blowing out the candle, and therefore extinguishing her source of light. She put a hand on her furiously beating heart, while she rose from her cushioned stool and mumbling a few epithets that were not very lady-like. She thanked the Angel that Jessamine wasn’t around snooping in her room as she usually did, otherwise Lucie was sure she would have started a long tirade on _How ladies are not supposed to employ those kind of expressions._ She approached the window, shivering. In her haste after the long day of training with her soon to be _parabatai_ Cordelia, she had barged in through the door, accompanying – slamming – it close with her foot. She had kicked off her shoes and got rid of some of the layers of her dress, when suddenly she had been struck by a fulgurous inspiration and felt the urge of starting writing immediately. The outer layers of her dress laid abandoned in a pool on the floor near her wardrobe. Lucie realized her state of clothes, or lack thereof, when near the window copious chills traveled down her spine. She closed the window with a click huffing, goosebumps now evident on her almost bare arms.

“Lucie are you alright?” a voice behind her asked softly.

She yelped and turned around, once again brining a trembling hand to her heart, in an attempt at calming its rhythm. Useless attempt, since she soon saw to **whom** the voice belonged to. Jesse Blackthorn was standing in the middle of her room, his ethereal beauty resplendent in the darkness. The rays of the moon streaming in from outside gently illuminated his features and catching on fine dark hair turning it silver. “Jesse” she simply said breathless. An embarrassed kind of silence fell on the two when “Erm… perhaps you… you’d want to wear some—something else on top of…” he shyly told Lucie, words stumbling one after the other, and if ghosts could have blushed, he would have exhibited a nice shade of red. Not for the first time in his presence, Lucie asked herself if one could die of embarrassment. She looked down at herself and noticed that her corset cover was half up and half down and by that her chamise was peaking, then only one petticoat still adorned her slender figure. “Oh right. So—sorry about this”. She squealed, circling her chest trying to cover the part of corset showing from the cover. With fake confidence she strode to the dress on the floor. With Jesse’s eyes never leaving her she felt her cheeks heat up. Dress in hand she stammered “Do—do you mind?” “Oh; of—of course. Sorry” he exhaled hastily turning around to give Lucie her privacy. He heard the unmistakable whooshing of fabrics. Lucie tried not to think about the fact that he was in the very same room she was changing and that he had seen her in her corset. She thought that she was really lucky that neither her father nor James could see Jesse otherwise she believed that they would have found a way to bring him back to life – before her—and kill him again. Once she had finished putting back on her dress, she cleared her throat.

“Sorry about… this –she indicated herself – I tend to get pretty distracted when inspiration hits me and I realized too late that I hadn’t quite finished changing” she explained, the rosy color still evident on her face. “It’s me who should apologise; I didn’t mean to be indiscreet or to intrude.” Jesse lowered his head showing his shame. Which according to Lucie was a crime since she couldn’t see his startling green eyes. Eyes that she had started to love. After he had given up his last breath to save James, the two of them had started meeting almost every night, getting to know the other better, as well as growing fonder of the other with each passing day. They had started their own unique routine. Jesse would appear in her room, and they would keep bathe in their respective companies, grateful to be together at least like this. At times they would talk until the break of dawn when the unforgiving light of day would take him away from Lucie; other times they would stay in silence, Jesse admiring her while she was caught up in her writing, only breaking the silence to comment on a particular challenging section of her story to write, or ask him about he would express this or that scenario. What Lucie hated the most of their nocturnal rendezvous, was the fact that by offering his own life to her brother, Jesse had become incorporeal. If before, in the rare occasions in which she had touched him, although… cold, he could return her gestures. Now she was constantly reminded of how he was not truly there, that his body laid in a glass coffin in his decadent family house, alone. There had been moments in which, in her excitement she had reached her hand to put it atop of his and how it had pass right through it leaving a gelid sensation that chilled her to the bones. Or when, glancing outside her high window, Jesse right there beside her, she had wished to put her head on his shoulder, perhaps feeling his arm snake around her waist to hold her closer… closer.

That was why she had promised herself that she was going to help Grace, despite not being her biggest fan, to bring him back. She had to do it. No matter the cost. In her egoistical ruminations she had realized that she wanted Jesse to be with her, in the flash, so he could touch her, so she could show him how much she cared about him. This realization had scared her at first, not knowing well what name to give it, but in the end, she had found that whenever he appeared in her quarters, her heart beating furiously was a reminder of why she needed him back. And that was, again, precisely the reason why she hadn’t told Jesse anything, because Lucie knew that if she were to tell him that his dear sister and she were meddling with dark magic and unnatural practices he would have tried to stop them, fearing for their lives. It struck Lucie how caring Jesse had revealed to be, despite his unkind childhood and his so unfair and untimely death. He always acted without an ounce of selfishness inside of him, putting the benefits of others before him.

“You know that you could never intrude or be indiscrete with me, Jesse” Lucie breathed. Without noticing she had started closing the distance that separated them, raising a trembling hand, facing him. Perhaps, understanding her gesture, Jesse raised his own hand, stepping closer still. Their palms almost grazing, but not quite.

“How I wish I could touch you right now. You have no idea how excruciating this is for me”. Lucie who was staring at their almost interconnected limbs, raised her gaze with a gasp at his words. “And you cannot fathom how much I wished you were here with me. Really here with me.” She answered back, her accelerated breathing turned her voice both squeaky and breathy. “I’ve found myself longing for your touch every waking moment I spend with you” Lucie finished. She knew her face was red as a beet, and to make matters worse was the fact that it was her turn now to be under the moon’s rays.

“Lucie… please, don’t make it worse than this already is.” His raised hand jerked a bit forward as if he wanted to cup her jaw but remembered immediately that he could not.

“It’s true, why should I hide my feelings?” “I don’t want you to hide them, but I don’t want you to linger on what can never be. You have to start and realise that. The sooner you admit it to yourself, the better will be.” Jesse said.

Another step forward, so that now Lucie had to crane her neck to look him in his green eyes. “You talk like you’ve already given up on the possibility for you to come back” “Because it is indeed like that. There is no way for me to ever come back. None.” He said shaking his head in denial.

“What if there was? I know that we can do something about it. I refuse to give up, to give up on you especially” Lucie’s tone was assertive. “What are you trying to imply?” He arched his eyebrow “Lucie, you have to swear to me that you won’t do anything dangerous to try and bring me back. Please. It’s not worth it. I’m not worth the risk that this… foolish idea would inevitably put you in” Jesse rose his arms, trembling, again in a very human manner, as if he wanted to put his hands on her shoulder and shake some sense into her. Outside the wind howled incessantly.

“I’m afraid I cannot promise you that.” She whispered back, lowering her head. She felt a stray curl fall on her forehead, tickling her cheek lightly. “What did you do Lucie? Please tell me” his agitation palpable in his voice. “Nothing… yet. Just some research” she brought her eyes back on Jesse’s green ones and once again she wondered how such a color was possible to have. “Please, don’t do this. You have to let me go. I cannot give you what you desire… I’m not alive Lucie. I’m just a soul stuck in between. I don’t have a choice. You have to move on, live your life to the fullest, fall in love, start a family if you wish to. All things that I cannot give you.” He finished his impassioned speech, all his body was trembling now, the closed fists at his side a clear indication of that. Lucie wished not for the first time to be able to reach for him and envelop him in her arms, instead, with a courage she didn’t know from where she muster, she said “I thought you knew… we Herondales, we only love once.” “That’s just a story Lucie.” “All stories are true Jesse.” She rebutted, even if tears were streaming down her face, his name rolled naturally out her tongue.

“We have no future –his voice broke, mixing with a sob – I cannot give you one”. “I don’t care about the future. I care about the present, about us. Here, together.”

Lucie let out her reply, her chest hurting from both the sobbing and the pure ache she was feeling. “I don’t want a future if you’re not in it. I’d rather focus on the present, where I’m certain that you are.” Her hand wiped away her tears, before continuing “let me have this, at least. These moments together, in which we do not concern ourselves with what is going to become of us, please.”

The look on Jesse’s face was unreadable, and his features were contorted in a pained frown. “Lucie… I— I don’t know what to say.” “Then say nothing. Come to the window with me instead.”

Surprisingly he didn’t try to argue back anymore. He simply followed her to where she had positioned two chairs right in front of the high window. Sitting silently beside her.

“The moon is especially beautiful tonight, don’t you think?” Lucie asked, her upturned face illuminated by its light. It seemed that outside the window had begun to calm down, more of a gentle breeze now, than a tempestuous one. “Yes, beautiful.” Jesse breathed, not looking at the moon at all, but being mesmerized by the reflection of the rays on her pale skin.

She turned to face him, with a watery smile. Reaching out her hand between like before. Understanding what she wanted to do, he raised his own and he let it hover hers.

Neither knew how much time passed, it might have been minutes as well as hours, or again it might have been that they had entered their own personal time line in which they could just be. “I wish we could freeze this moment and I could stay here with you, forever” Jesse said, his eyes leaving the world outside to settle on the extraordinary girl with him. 

Suddenly Lucie got up, almost as if something had bitten her, and hurried to the desk, taking her fountain pen, but removing the cap. “What are you doing? Is something the matter?” He asked preoccupied. To which she replied “Nothing is wrong. I just had an idea”. Lucie got closer to the window, her bed on the right side of it.

She put the tip of her pen on the wall and started scrawling. Interested Jesse got up from his chair and approached her. “What are you doing?” he could see that on the pain a _J_ had started to taken form. “I’m freezing this moment forever.”

Her answer startled him. Before he knew it, a _B_ , appeared beside the already scribble _J. JB._ His initials, he realized. Without second thoughts, and no fears he walked the small distance that separated him from Lucie and put his hand on hers. The vision mark on the back of her hand starkly standing out even in the dim light. As always it did not meet flesh but pass right through it. He heard her gasp and angle her head to look at him.

Jesse just looked at her with a serene expression and pretended to be really holding Lucie’s hand to help her write, he stayed there, as she wrote _LH._ Lucie felt the usual cold sensation that came from touching him in this form. However, this time it did not chill her soul, but refreshed her hope to find a way to bring him back.

“There.” She still had her back to him, and she would have felt his chest pressed to hers if he was still corporeal. The thought made her blush, but she turned anyways. “So that we will always remember this moment. Together.” She finished.

Her heart was once again pierced when a smiling Jesse simply said “I wouldn’t want it any other way”. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Emma raised the withclight she had turned on to get a better look at the initials Cristina had found scrawled by the window and that she had later showed her when they had decided to sleep in the same room that night. Both of them with their heads too full of thoughts to be alone.

She wondered to whom they could belong, even if the _B_ beside that _J_ , spoke to her heart. She happened to have also a JB in her life, and she started fantasticating on the idea that perhaps, one day, finding a solution to their problem, Julian and she could inscribe their initials somewhere. A reminder to others that love can be really stronger than anything else. Even than death.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you liked this story.  
> I may or may not have “sacrificed” my study to look up how they were dressed in the 1900’s which then got me spiraling into a vortex of fantastic videos of women dressing up according to the historical period they were in. My ultimate wish is to make a Charlotte costume, but as it is right now I don’t have the money nor the skills to embark on such a a journey.
> 
> Come say hello on my tumblr and twitter @ if you feel like it :D
> 
> Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/claudiarya  
> Twitter: @/claudiarya1


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